Dale Spindel
I'm one of those people who's always a little ambivalent when I hear that a book I love is going to be turned into a movie. Although there is always the possibility that the movie will be true to the book and provide me with a more sensory version of a story I love, I have learned from bitter experience not to expect this to happen very often. Although I understand the need for a movie to attract an audience that is large enough to turn a profit and although I also understand that people are very often not looking for a depressing story when they go for a night out, I absolutely hate it when a movie adaption changes the ending to make it more upbeat. I guess if someone has not already read the book it doesn't really matter but for a purist like me this is a practice bordering on heresy.
I came relatively late to being a fan of the miniseries genre. In the beginning, miniseries were broadcast for an hour or two over several consecutive nights; in the days before I had a VCR but had to work a schedule at the reference desk which included one evening per week it was impossible for me to ever watch a complete miniseries. Fortunately, modern technology has eliminated this problem and I have actually come to prefer miniseries adaptations because their greater length allows them to adhere more closely to the details of the original story. I could be wrong, but in my somewhat limited experience , I have also noticed less of a tendency to change the endings.
Things get a little more murky when novels are used as the basis for episodic weekly television series. In searching the web, I found an article from Parade Magazine which reminded me that one of the earliest TV adaptations was Little House on the Prairie, a show I never watched. Tween/teen novels or series mentioned in the article included Sweet Valley High, Pretty Little Liars, and Gossip Girls. More adult oriented TV series that were based on previously published books include the crime oriented Dexter (based on Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsey), Bones (based on Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan novels) and Rizzoli & Isles (based on novels by Tess Gerritsen). One other series which comes to mind but which was not included in the Parade list was Justified which is based on novels and stories by Elmore Leonard. I am sure there are also a lot more that Parade and I are leaving out.
Two other novels used as the basis for full length (as opposed to mini) series are Game of Thrones (based on the fantasy novel by George R.R. Martin) and True Blood (based on the Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels by Charlaine Harris). It is very much out of character for me that I watched season one of both these series since I am not at all into fantasy and will probably never be inclined to spend time reading novels about vampires. I do not know how closely either of these series adhered to the novels on which they were based but for me it doesn't really matter - my experience with these shows is just proof of my belief that people who do not enjoy a particular category of book will also not enjoy television series that are based on those books. In other words, I will not be returning to the couch to watch season 2 or either series.
But please don't get the opinion that I disapprove of novelists turning their books into television series. It was recently announced that Tom Perrotta's novel, The Leftovers, is being turned into a series for HBO and I also recently read that Jonathan Safran Foer is working on a project (which may or may not be a series - he's not yet been allowed to reveal anything much about it) so I am eagerly awaiting my chance to view on television anything that was written by two of my favorite authors. I am also completely in favor of having talented novelists writing new and original material for television, as was the case with The Wire which featured writing by George Pelecanos, Richard Price and Dennis Lehane.
What all this literary talent on the small screen means is that television is finally coming of age. While I will be the first to agree that children should spend more time reading than watching television so that they can develop their language and communications skills, for adults who have already attained an acceptable level of literacy it doesn't matter whether they watch something on television or read a book as long as they enjoy it.
Postscript:
In the United States, it is a generally accepted rite of passage that high school students read one or more of Shakespeare's plays; although I know that things are different now, when I was in school, English teachers pretty much ignored the fact that in Shakespeare's time the only way to experience his work was to go to the theater. I am convinced that if Shakespeare were alive today he too would be writing series for HBO. Between the witches in Macbeth and the shapeshifter and fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream he would probably be pretty popular too .
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